In the construction industry, the process of locating and marking underground facilities is required prior to any excavation activity. In this process, excavators are required to notify underground facility owners in advance of their excavation activities and to describe and communicate the geographic area of those activities to the underground facility owners. For example, excavators may submit a work order (i.e., locate request or ticket) to, for example, a one-call center, which serves as notification to underground facility owners of the planned excavation. A locate request (or ticket) may be any communication or instruction to perform a locate operation at a certain dig area. The dig area is any specified geographic area within which excavation may occur. One call centers may receive locate requests from excavators via electronic delivery or verbally through a telephone conversation between the excavator and a human call center operator. Whether communicated electronically or verbally, excavators must describe the planned geographic locations of dig areas. This description may be ultimately reduced to text, which, along with other data about a locate request, is communicated to the appropriate locate service provider.
Textual descriptions of dig areas can be very imprecise as to exact physical locations. In addition, addresses which are provided may be unclear, indicating only cross streets and vague descriptions of the extent of the dig area. Therefore, when a locate request is submitted by an excavator, it may be beneficial for the excavator to supplement the locate request with a visit to the site of the dig area for the purpose of indicating the particular geographic location of the proposed excavation. For example, marks may be used to physically indicate a dig area. These marks may consist of chalk or paint that is applied to the surface of the ground, and are generally known as “white lines.” The marked dig area indicates to a locate technician the extent of the boundaries where a locate operation is to be performed according to the locate request that was submitted by the excavator.
However, the use of these physical white lines to physically indicate the dig area may be limited. For example, these physical white lines provide only a temporary indication of the dig area, as the physical white lines may deteriorate or be eliminated over time by such events as precipitation, excessive pedestrian or vehicle traffic, erosion, the excavation process, or numerous other events. Therefore, a need exists for improved ways of indicating the proposed excavation site in a more permanent and/or reproducible manner.
Further, while marking the dig area with white lines may serve to identify a certain dig area, it may lack specificity with respect to the precise location of the planned excavation. Currently, a locate technician arrives at the job site and may perform tasks associated with locate operations over the entire dig area that has been marked via the white lines, when in fact the precise location of interest to the excavator may only be a path or line within or across the marked dig area. Consequently, time and resources may be lost performing tasks associated with locate operations over a larger physical area than is necessary. Therefore, a need exists for improved ways of indicating with more specificity the dig area of planned excavation.